Any parent or caretaker will immediately appreciate the difficulties and challenges that arise when taking a small child to a public place. Parents carry a perpetual fear of losing their child in public places. Child supervision is particularly troublesome in crowded and congested public areas such as transportation terminals (airport, train depot, bus depot), zoos, circuses, amusement parks, stores, and malls. A parent's fear of losing a child in these places makes public excursions events to dread rather than experiences to anticipate.
Known are child restraining devices such as harness and tethers. Each of these has shortcomings. Harnesses typically require one or both of the caretaker's hands to guide and restrain the child. This restricts the caretaker's ability to tend to other matters that require the use of one's hands. In addition, child harnesses carry a negative social stigma. Child harnesses are often viewed by onlookers (and other parents or caretakers in particular) as overly restrictive and repressive. The use of such harnesses are often perceived as degrading to the child. Other known tethers have extendible lines between the adult and child, the lines having a minimum length. These tethers are problematic as the slack of these tethers tends to catch on objects. The child is easily entangled in the slack, and the dragging slack dirties both the harness and the child.
A need exists for an effective, hands-free tether device to safely maintain a child in close proximity with a caretaker in public areas. A need further exists for a tether device that eliminates the problems associated with tether slack.